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South bend heavy 10 part numbers

mikedell

Plastic
Joined
Aug 20, 2017
Hello,
I purchased a early model heavy 10 and after tearing down the headstock I found the spindle as well as the bearings are shot. I've already located a spindle but the bearings are proving tough to find. They're not the normal bronze bearings but are two pieces. I've never seen bearings like these.

I'm including a link of a picture of my bearing as I can't get pics to show up in my post. Any help on part numbers you could give me would be a huge help.

Link to Picture. 2-E1-A0-B96-11-CE-4-A1-F-813-E-54-EBA7235577 — imgbb.com
 
Your headstock has segmented iron bearings...they are not interchangeable. Your bearings do NOT look bad. The minor scoring looks negligible. Clean the bearing surfaces with a nylon or bronze brush with kerosene or brake clean, and oil them up to prevent rusting. Do NOT use anything abrasive like emery, etc. Can't offer any advice on spindle without a pic. Post one, and someone here will surely advise you to best practice. Good luck. PB
 
Thanks for the reply. The spindle was chewed up pretty good. My finger nail catches in the grooves created from running dry I suppose. I can really reuse these bearings by only cleaning them? Won't the grooves in the bearings cause issues?
 
That looks pretty minor compared to what I found. Some guy whose initials are John Oder suggested I stone down the high spots on the spindle and give it a go. That's been close to 20 years ago, and I do not baby the lathe.
 
The bearing shell pictured does not looks so bad. I have these bearings on my 10L. Here's what I would do given what you describe:

Put the spindle back in the headstock but do not install the bearing caps. Using very light drive belt tension, run the lathe at its slowest speed and then take a really fine abrasive stone--like an India orange stone or something similarly fine and hard and LIGHTLY run it over the spindle as it rotates. Use plenty of oil to lubricate. This should take the high spots off the spindle. Remove the spindle and clean it. Flush the bearings in the headstock to clean out any residual abrasive and then pull the oil fill cups and flush out the oil reservoir cavities to make sure you don't leave abrasive dust in there. Reassemble the spindle and bearing caps and adjust the bearing clearance by adding or removing shims.

At this point you should be good to go. Just make sure that there is plenty of oil in the reservoirs. Use something like SAE 10 non-detergent if you don't have the "official" South Bend spindle oil. As I understand it, that's a hydrodynamic bearing which relies on oil pressure developed in the segments as the shaft rotates to support the shaft and keep it from rubbing on the bearing material. It is absolutely intolerant of being run dry and that may be why South Bend ditched it and went to the bronze shells.
 
Last night I ordered another spindle off eBay but I'm going to try your advice before I swap them and see how it goes. The spindle was chewed up worse than any I've seen. It literally looks like it was run for hours without lubrication. I have the entire headstock tore down and found that when the previous owner decided to slop paint all over it he even got paint down in the oilers.

I'm not sure how that was possible because the oilers all have their caps, I also found the spring-loaded felt oilers that sit under the spindle we're both broken and barely had enough tension to come up out of the oil galley.

I ordered a rebuild kit off eBay as I now realize this is a full rebuild instead of a service.
 
Please be aware that SB advertised the spindle for the cast iron bearings as "superfinished" - so it's almost certainly a different finish than the one supplied for the bronze bearing machines.
Can you share a photo of your spindle please?
 








 
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